Not The One To Let Them Down
by peacefulsands
Summary: Dean feels let down. He isn't even sure why that feeling surprises him anymore.


**Not The One To Let Them Down**

Dean feels let down. He isn't even sure why that feeling surprises him anymore. Surely he should be used to it, used to people not thinking about him at all.

It's not even like it's the first time that Sam's ever done something like it. It's been going on almost their whole lives. He spent the greater part of his childhood putting Sam first, making sure Sam had everything he needed, running interference between him and Dad and trying to make things seem better than they were, safer than they had ever been.

Sam had spent almost all of his teen years complaining and he hadn't really stopped since. There was the constant moving, the dives they had to stay in, Dad's absence, school, food . . . all of it something that he could throw at Dean without ever considering just how much it hurt Dean to hear the same complaints over and over and over again; all of which seemed to boil down to their life wasn't good enough. It was the best Dean and Dad had been able to give him, and it had never been enough. It had taken a long time for Sam to consider that maybe Dean hadn't been there through choice, hadn't necessarily liked it any more than Sam had, but he'd learned to live with it; learned to make the best of what they had.

Dad had let him down too. His absence, the constant moving, the leaving Dean to bring up Sam, try and reason with Sam. He'd let them both down, but Dean had mostly understood. Dad's goal was something more, something bigger than them, something greater and more important and Dean had tried to understand and respect that, but there was still that nagging voice inside that said, even with that in mind, Dad should still have found a way to give them more.

Sam leaving for Stanford had opened the wounds again. Not like they'd ever really had time to heal anyway. In the end it wasn't even the leaving that really left him feeling let down; he'd sort of known it was coming, even if he'd tried to deny its possibility. The real let down came when Sam didn't call, wouldn't answer his calls, didn't make any attempt to make contact at all. That was like a stab to the heart.

There are few people in his life that didn't let him down. Dean isn't sure how it compares to 'normal people'; in which number he does not even pretend to include himself. His mom, Dean refuses to accept that any of this was her fault, that there is any way she can be held responsible. She was his mom, she died to save them, to save Sam and Dad and him. She loved them. She also never really had time to let him down. He knows she was a hunter now, knows that she knew more than she ever let on to Dad, but he also believes in his heart that she'd taken every precaution she could to protect them. He knows he'll never be able to prove it now with so many years gone by, but he's sure she'd have used every trick she knew, every spell, every ward to keep their house safe. But the yellow-eyed demon was one of the big boys. Nothing was going to keep him from what he wanted then. Years it took them to gather their research to even begin to track him, so Dean won't believe that his mother could have done anything more than she did. Dean knows she loved them.

There was Pastor Jim. He'd been a steadying influence, someone whose reaction Dean could always rely on. If he was annoyed he said so; if he was proud he said it even louder. Dean knew how much he'd needed that; in truth he still needed it or something like it. He knew how much Jim had tried to pick up the slack when Dad let them down, how he'd tried to ease Dean's burden. Dean missed him, probably always would.

There was the Impala. Dean wasn't sure he should include her in the 'people' who hadn't let him down, but she was the one constant in his life; more than Dad or Sam or 'home'. She had always been with him. She'd listened and heard his heartbreaks, hi s anger and even his small joys at times. Beyond gas and oil and the occasional tweak under the hood, she was the one who asked nothing of him and returned it all wholeheartedly. He was certain she enjoyed the open road and Metallica on full blast every bit as much as he did.

There was Bobby. He knew he couldn't ask more of Bobby than he had already. Like Jim, they weren't family, not real family, but Dean knew that sometimes family weren't the people you were actually related to, it was the people who cared enough to make you one of their own. Bobby had done that time and time again.

Dean looks at his brother across the room, knows without a doubt that he's been out to see Ruby and the hurt just wells inside him again. This betrayal is worse than anything that's gone before, the knowledge that Sam won't listen to him or Bobby, doesn't hear reason and instead carries on the games he's playing with a demon. Dean's been to Hell and back quite literally and yet that isn't enough for Sam to believe him when he says that nothing Ruby does or says is really going to help him.

Dean just wants it all to end. He doesn't want to keep on fighting, to be the Righteous Man.

But no matter what, Dean can't just give up, because he owes it to his Mom, to Pastor Jim and Bobby. He owes that much at least to the people who didn't let him down. He won't be the one to let them down.


End file.
